


…Like I Need Another Hole in the Head

by Dustbunnygirl



Series: Tales of the Bard - Reggie's Story [7]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-26
Updated: 2007-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-14 09:52:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8008843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dustbunnygirl/pseuds/Dustbunnygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Title: …Like I Need Another Hole in the Head , 7 of 10<br/>Prompt: A First, "the 10s" challenge.<br/>Fandom: n/a<br/>Pairing: Dahlia/Reggie<br/>Rating: PG-13<br/>Word count: 1,855<br/>Warnings: May contain cleavage, cod pieces, and Dahlia’s foul mouth.<br/>Disclaimer: These characters are entirely owned by moi and come from my still untitled, unpublished, mostly second drafted Monster Book of the Unholy. They do not play well with others. The only person to blame for them is, unfortunately, me. However, blame legal_padawan for the fact this story was written at all, as she twisted my arm into this challenge of hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	…Like I Need Another Hole in the Head

“I don’t know how I let you talk me into these things,” Reggie said as he stood staring at his own reflection in the shop door. It had been so long since he’d seen anything but the ferret’s face, he still had trouble recognizing himself. It didn’t help that his eyes were half-hidden behind round, blue-tinted sunglasses, or that the last memory he had of his own reflection involved leggings and a doublet; it was strange to see himself in a t-shirt and jeans.

Weirder still to see himself outside a shop that prided itself on poking holes into people and either filling them with small metal adornments or permanent inks. The shiver he felt, taking in the list of services posted outside the door, was less an involuntary twitch than his skin’s attempt at crawling off his body and running for the hills. There were some places sharp objects should never dwell, he firmly believed, and at least three of them were on that list.

He’d never missed his codpiece so much in his entire elongated existence.

Dahlia stepped up behind him, the top of her candy apple red head poking over his shoulder in the door’s reflection. “I think a couple beers were involved,” she said, stretching up to tiptoe so her wink could be seen in the glass. “By the way? Total lightweight. Your alcohol tolerance is weak.”

“Excuse me! Many, many, many, many years stuck as a ferret, I might remind you, spent without the opportunity to indulge.”

“You were giggly after half a beer!”

“Which should have been your first clue that I wasn’t in my right mind when I agreed to this nonsense.”

Someone coughed behind Reggie, the choking sort of sound made when the cougher attempts not to laugh. The former ferret king turned to stare at the source of the noise. Guy leaned against a parking meter, fanning himself with a folded copy of the latest Pitch Weekly. 

“Is the big bad warrior scared of a teensy little prick?” he asked, humor blatantly unmasked.

“Not at all,” Reggie said, and without pausing a beat, added, “You don’t scare me in the slightest.”

Dahlia intervened then, slipping her arm around Reggie’s and guiding him to the door. “Play nice, boys,” she said as she reached out to give the plate glass a firm shove. 

“Couldn’t we have left him on the side of the road somewhere?” 

“Reggie…”

“Tied down to a railroad track perhaps?”

“No.”

\--

The room had a sharp smell, antiseptic winning out over the sweet incense wafting in from the lobby. The piercing technician, a lithe blonde in low rise jeans and a cropped t-shirt named Mandy stood off to the side as Reggie examined the room. In his day, torture chambers were dark, stone-walled cells with bare floors and dripping ceilings. They hung chains from the walls and left the blood-coated, rusted-over instruments of their trade lying in wait for the next poor soul. Now their walls were painted maroon. The hardwood floor was polished and gleaming and the only thing coming from the ceiling was the warm glow of the overhead light. Concert fliers and movie posters clung to the walls and the equipment – an apparatus referred to as a “piercing gun” – sat on a table by the padded chair at the center of the room. There wasn’t a speck of blood or rust to be seen on it.

Most executioners didn't wear pink thongs that peeked above the waistband of their jeans when they bent over either, he reminded himself before pulling his eyes away from his would-be tormentor. 

“Go on and have a seat,” Mandy said with a wave toward the chair. “It’ll just take me a couple minutes to get things together, then we’ll get started.” As Reggie crossed the threshold to claim the condemned’s chair, Dahlia stepped in behind him. “Would you like me to get a chair for your girlfriend?”

Reggie stared, dumbstruck, at the blonde. “She’s not my…”

“I’m not his girlfriend,” Dahlia chirped, quicker and louder than she most likely intended. When Reggie turned a raised brow and smirk her way, her cheeks turned a shade of red only slightly dimmer than her hair.

“Huh.” Mandy grinned, wide and predatory, as she set out alcohol swabs and rubber gloves. “Sister?”

“She’s my mis-“

Dahlia grabbed Reggie’s hand and squeezed, hard.

“…chievous roommate, he means to say,” she offered, glaring at the erstwhile ferret king. “Trouble trouble trouble, that’s me!” 

Mandy huh’d again as she rolled her stool around the front of Reggie’s chair. She leaned her elbows on his knees and peered up at him, exposing a line of cleavage and milky skin to his nervous gaze. Like a deer face to face with an on-coming semi-trailer, he couldn’t flee or look away. He was caught dead on by the glare from her headlights. 

Dahlia, still crushing his fingers in her vice grip squeeze, cleared her throat to reclaim his attention. All he could think was “I really should offer her a cough drop for that, shouldn’t I? Maybe Mary keeps some down there in her…”

“Left or right?” 

Mandy’s words barely cut through the fog her décolletage was creating. He looked up, confused, and stuttered out an off-kilter, “Excuse me?”

“Ear. Left or right ear,” she said, still smiling. Out of the corner of his eye, Reggie noticed Dahlia’s jaw twitching.

“Errr, left, I think. Left wasn’t it, Dahlia?” Dahlia snorted in response before muttering something that sounded very painful and highly impossible, given his knowledge of human anatomy. Knowing the redhead, however, he was sure she could find a way to put an earring exactly where she suggested. Of course, it would make sitting highly uncomfortable.

Mandy patted his leg and rolled her stool back, untouched it would seem by the tension in the air. Reggie watched her snap the gloves as she pulled them over her hands, flinched at the resurrection of the antiseptic tang in the air as the swabs were opened and everything from the gun to the lobe of his ear was cleaned. As she placed a small silver stud into the business end of the gun – chosen by Dahlia because silver was more classy, in her opinion, and supposedly good for warding off werewolves - Reggie turned to Dahlia and attempted to squeeze the hand still crushing his.

“All right there, brat?” he asked while trying to twist his mouth into an easygoing grin. He felt neither easy nor going. Fairly planted and caught between a rock and enormous cleavage. 

“Fine.” Dahlia’s lips hardly moved. Reggie had seen that particular expression before – the thinly drawn lips, clenched jaw, half-squinted eyes. It was a look that he’d come to attribute, in the years he spent with the Thorn family, with cold suppers and Dahlia’s father sleeping on the couch. Unhappy, in a word, though he couldn’t put his finger on the source. There was a time his young mistress would have taken absolute joy in his impending torture, despite how kind-hearted as she usually was.

Before he could let himself dwell on the source of his confusion something cold and – at one end anyway – sharp pressed to his ear. Mandy’s hand, consumed in latex, pushed at his cheek to turn him where she wanted him. This time the view out of the corner of his eye was another smiling woman, though the curve of her lips held no comfort. Reggie had only one thought as the gun settled against the side of his head: “Whatever you do, don’t dare faint, you incredible pansy.”

To his credit, all he did was scream.

\--

Reggie watched the patchwork of leaves and filtered sunlight play overhead and ignored the odd look and amused whisper of every person who passed on the street. There must be weirder things to see, he thought as he counted along in time to the throb in his ear, than a man sprawled on a city bench with his head in a girl’s lap. Of course, given that he’d chosen a particularly fetal position to sprawl himself in and that said girl was feeding him ice cream as if he were a four year old fresh from his shots perhaps added to the gawk factor.

Or maybe it was Guy’s intermittent laughter and pointing. 

“We’ll put some ice on it when we get home,” Dahlia said as she spooned up another bite of soft serve and offered it down to him. “It’ll help.”

“I could die – I could just about die.” Guy was breathless from laughing. Tears ran down the sides of his face faster than he could casually wipe them away. “Never heard anything so…”

“Okay, Guy. We get it.”

“Could hear him half way down the…”

“That’s enough, Guy.”

“Thought the receptionist was going to…”

The plastic spoon flew through the air like a spear, colliding with Guy’s chest and splattering vanilla ice cream across the front of his shirt.

“That’s enough, Guy,” Dahlia said, before giving Reggie’s shoulder a shove that indicated she needed up, right then, right there, without delay. Reggie sat up and watched as she threw the last of the ice cream into the trashcan nearby and stalked off down the street. Guy untucked his shirt to wipe at the splash of melted soft serve, shaking his head.

“You really pissed her off,” he said. 

Reggie stared at the pixie, eyes wide with shock. “Me! But I didn’t even do anything!”

“The blonde gave you her number, right?” Guy asked, referring to the scrap of paper tucked in Reggie’s pocket.

“Well, yes. But I didn’t ask for it.”

“So you flirted with someone right in front of her.”

“I wouldn’t call it…and even if I did, why would it set her off like a Fourth of July rocket?”

Guy gestured down the sidewalk, to the retreating flounce of red hair crossing 9th Street against the light. “You tell me,” he said as he pulled himself up. “You tell me.”

\--

Dahlia timed her internal mantra to the stomp of her feet, to the rhythm of shoe sole to concrete. Not even the honk from a Corolla trying to make a left turn disrupted the staccato beat of steps and words. If she said them often enough, bombarded herself with them the entire walk home, maybe they would knock her brain back to reality and get rid of the gnawing feeling in her stomach, chase off the green cast hovering over everything since the minute that woman -skank, slut, bimbo; her brain substituted each in turn – put her hand on Reggie’s knee. 

Things could go right back to normal if she could just get the words to sink into her skull.

“Just a friend. Just a friend. Just a friend.” She repeated them over and over until they bled into each other and one wasn’t discernible from the next. Until they weren’t words at all and the magic within them couldn’t hold back the strange new tide. Then she stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and threw her hands in the air. 

“Fuck!”


End file.
